Sleeping with a snorer?

Snoring is common in men – at least a third of them admit to it. The real number is more like half, since many men don’t realize they’re sawing logs when they sleep. “I’ve had people tell me they don’t snore, and then they come to the sleep lab and snore a lot,” says Dr. Najib Ayas at the UBC Sleep Disorders Program in Vancouver. If men spend the night alone or with a deep sleeper, they may have no reason to suspect a problem.

Unfortunately for many couples, though, women tend to be lighter sleepers than men. Since men snore at about twice the rate of women, that combination can make for rocky relations. The InterContinental Hotels Group, based out of the U.K., claims that snoring leads to serious conflict in 30 per cent of couples.

Keen on filling rooms with snorers and their sleep-starved spouses, the company recently started testing “snore absorption rooms” in a few of its Crown Plaza hotel locations. These rooms use a combination of white noise to drown out the snoring, soundproofing to muffle it, pillows that use a magnetic field to open the snorer’s airways, and bed wedges that encourage an anti-snoring sleeping position. “The snore absorption room is not only set to cure sleepless nights, but potentially marriages as well,” states a confident-sounding press release.